Gentle motion of robot manipulator -how does human feel hand-over motion of a robot?-

摘要

A gentle motion of a robot manipulator is a robot motion that gives natural feelings to human who is the direct subject. The gentle motion is strongly required for a human friendly robot which is expected to that can support daily life and theactivities of humans including the elderly and the handicapped, because Japan's population is aging rapidly and also the birthvate is declining.In this paper, the interaction of a human and a robot manipulator through the hand-over task is studied as an example of gentle motions. First, we showed a robot manipulator handing a small box to a guest with six combinations of two trajectories of astraight line and a convexly curved line and in three speeds of 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 m/s to 93 subjects. By analyzing the data, the most suitable trajectory and speed for the subjects are the convexly curved line and 0.3 m/s, respectively. Second, we showed arobot manipulator handing a small box to a guest with four trajectories of a straight line and three curved line to 44 subjects. The trajectory of the straight line is a favorite with them. The descriptions of the subjects' impressions show the positionat which the robot manipulator pass the box and the volume of the manipulator arm have strong influences on human emotion.